A completely new story based on existing footage from the series Columbo.
Social & External
Columbo (archive footage)
Animal Charm makes videos from other people's videos. By compositing TV and reducing it to a kind of tic-ridden babble, they force television to not make sense. While this disruption is playful, it also reveals an overall 'essence' of mass culture that would not be apprehended otherwise. Videos such as Stuffing, Ashley, and Lightfoot Fever upset the hypnotic spectacle of TV viewing, revealing how advertising creates anxiety, how culture constructs "nature" and how conventional morality is dictated through seemingly neutral images. By forcing television to convulse like a raving lunatic, we might finally hear what it is actually saying.
In an effort to cure her smoking habit a middle-aged woman discovers that she can communicate with her long lost son while watching a Halloween safety program on TV. After suffering a nervous breakdown, her husband, a used car salesman, is revitalized when he travels back in time to drive the first car he ever sold. Seventeen years later a powerful canned food manufacturer crashes the same car into a toaster truck while endorsing a brand of yams on live TV. At the funeral his clergyman experiences a crisis of faith when he and a lifelike Mexican continue their search for a married couple who have befriended an insect who enjoys drinking lime soda. They later meet a young man whose bizarre murder scheme involves four innocent members of an experimental rock band who have all given up smoking.
A whirlwind of improvisation combines the images of animator Pierre Hébert with the avant-garde sound of techno whiz Bob Ostertag in this singular multimedia experience, a hybrid of live animation and performance art.
An aging, down-on-his-luck ex-minor leaguer coaches a team of misfits in an ultra-competitive California little league.
Glen doesn't dare tell his fiancée Barbara that he is a transvestite; in addition, Alan is undergoing medical treatment to become a woman named Anne; both stories are told by a psychiatrist.
It started with filming the tree. Something was released in that manner of filming seemingly farthest removed from the procedure of the early films. I first thought a simple ordering of this rich material might be enough, something related to BARN RUSHES [...] But the film only came into its form-life with the idea of linking this deep-rooted and far-outreaching tree material with that film on paranoia that had fascinated me for many years. –L. G.
"With characteristic wit and rigor, experimental filmmaker Larry Gottheim here applies his impressionistic editing style to footage collected during his travels in the Dominican Republic. Gottheim’s formal emphasis on repetition and fissures between sound and image resonates here as a mode of sociological reflection (with the fragmentary montage mirroring elements of ritual while also destabilizing the ethnographic gaze). A largely overlooked antecedent to the contemporary blending of avant-garde and ethnographic filmmaking, MACHETTE GILLETTE… MAMA still poses a potent challenge to documentary convention." - Max Goldberg
This film describes a psychological state "kin to moonstruck, its images emblems (not quite symbols) of suspension-of-self within consciousness and then that feeling of falling away from conscious thought. The film can only be said to describe or be emblematic of this state because I cannot imagine symbolizing or otherwise representing an equivalent of thoughtlessness itself. Thus the actors in the film, Jane Brakhage, Tom and Gloria Bartek, Williams Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Olovsky and Phillip Whalen are figments of this 'Thought-Fallen Process', as are their images in the film to find themselves being photographed."
How many movies have you seen where at the end the main character wakes up, causing he and the audience to simultaneously realize that everything they witnessed beforehand was "just a dream?" This film takes that principal but instead of deceiving, the story invites you to watch the main characters dream away. As a result, "True Dreams" takes the dream sequence to a whole new level: it lets its audience in on the joke, while they watch the two main characters run around unaware of the reality/fantasy of their surroundings. This film can be viewed via Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/132642294 (password: truedreams)
On the island of Tanna, a part of Vanuatu, an archipelago in Melanesia, strange rites are enacted and time passes slowly while the inhabitants await the return of the mysterious John.
When a son attempts to reconcile with his father, a series of fateful events allow him to experience the father's life in the past.
Found footage anti-war film comprising film documents of the Austro-Hungarian and Italian army on the Alpine front, and from first generation picture material by war-film pioneer Luca Comerio.
A pre-internet mash-up that mixes “Peanuts” and David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet.”
Filmmakers use archival footage and animation to explore the culture surrounding nuclear weapons, the fascination they inspire and the perverse appeal they still exert.
In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made a deal with Leth to remake his film five times, each under a different set of circumstances and with von Trier's strictly prescribed rules. As Leth completes each challenge, von Trier creates increasingly further elaborate stipulations.
An experimental film about a peaceful and carefree life in a small Dalmatian town, which turns into bloodshed and horror on the eve of the Italian occupation of the country.
The film is a stage play hybrid showcasing dark and absurd sketches based on contemporary Hungarian news of the 2000's with campy, senseless musical interludes in-between. Highly experimental in nature that - like Marmite - will split its' crowd into ones that'll love it and others that'll loathe it. There's no middle grounds here. The topics included are: The Hungarian Olympians' doping scandal, political terrorism, the national elections... and more.
A 6-year-old Tibetan boy leaves his family and flees to a refugee camp in northern India.
Surrendering the mind to the hypnotic dance of fire, a candle's glimmer reveals dreamlike memories, illustrated by flickering fragments of experimental films that overlap alongside a deconstructed soundscape. Entering a hallucinatory state in a haunted ambience, one's own subconscious is put on display.
Following a car accident, Suzanne loses custody of her three children. She has no choice but to seek treatment at a center for alcoholics. As soon as she arrives, she meets Alice and Diane, two women with strong personalities. Denis, a sports instructor, will try to bring them together around the same goal: to participate in the Dune Rally in the Moroccan desert. He will need a lot of patience and teaching skills to prepare this unlikely team to achieve their goal.
A stroke of good luck turns lethal for Sam Phelan and his wife Leslie when they are faced with a life-changing decision that brings strange and sinister Pyke Kubic to their doorstep. As Pyke leads Sam and Leslie on a tumultuous adventure through the streets of Chicago, each are pulled deeper and deeper into a desperate spiral of deception and violence – all in the name of money.
Charles Dreyfus, who has finally cracked over inspector Clouseau's antics, escapes from a mental institution and launches an elaborate plan to get rid of Clouseau once and for all.
Society sleuths Nick and Nora Charles investigate a murder in a jazz club.
A shy San Francisco librarian and a bumbling cop fall in love as they solve a crime involving albinos, dwarves, and the Catholic Church.
High society sleuths Nick and Nora Charles run into a variety of shady characters while investigating a race-track murder.
A group of former Encyclopedia Brown-style child-detectives struggle to solve an adult mystery.
Four mental patients on a field trip in New York City must save their caring chaperone, who ends up being taken to a hospital in a coma after accidentally witnessing a murder, before the killers can find him and finish the job.
A struggling writer in the midst of a divorce befriends a retired serial killer who incidentally becomes his marriage counselor by day, and killing counselor for his next book by night.
A private eye investigates the apparent suicide of a fading porn star in 1970s Los Angeles and uncovers a conspiracy.
Henry Hart meets a superfan—eager to fight crime with Kid Danger—who comes into possession of a device that can open up alternate realities. Facing a wild ride, Henry will need his best friend Jasper and his new superfan sidekick to find his way out or be stuck in another dimension forever.
Not even the joys of parenthood can stop married sleuths Nick and Nora Charles from investigating a murder on a Long Island estate.
A crooked politician finds himself being accused of murder by a gangster from whom he refused help during a re-election campaign.
Special Agent Jack Carter reluctantly assumes the identity of criminal Archie Moses to take down a powerful South African crime family. But when the real Moses is put in danger, he and Carter must work together to foil the scheme for good.
A falsely convicted man's wife, Catherine, and an alcoholic composer and pianist, Martin, team up in an attempt to clear her husband of the murder of a blonde singer, who is Martin's wife.
Monk steps out of retirement as his stepdaughter's wedding turns tragic when her fiancé dies in a bungee jumping accident.
Daryl Zero is a private investigator and—along with his assistant, Steve Arlo—he solves impossible crimes and puzzles. Although Daryl's a master investigator, he doesn't know what to do with himself when he's not working; he has no social skills, writes bad music and drives Steve crazy.
A student on a trip to France is tricked into smuggling secrets across the Iron Curtain by a sexy spy.
A spoof of the entire 1940s detective genre. San Francisco private detective, Lou Pekinpaugh is accused of murdering his partner at the instigation of his mistress—his partner's wife.
In preparation for a shotgun wedding before the birth of Baby Guster, Shawn and Gus go rogue in an attempt to track down Selene’s estranged husband, as Lassiter grapples with the future of his career.
Follows Pete, a professional hitman, as he faces a group of assassins after the boss of a crime syndicate suspects disloyalty due to his attendance at Workaholics Anonymous meetings.